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The Janus-Faced Empire Distorting Orientalist Discourses: Gender, Race and Religion in the Russian/(Post)Soviet Constructions of the ”Orient”

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The Janus-Faced Empire Distorting Orientalist Discourses: Gender, Race and Religion in the Russian/(Post)Soviet Constructions of the ”Orient” The Janus-faced Empire Distorting Orientalist Discourses: Gender, Race and Religion in the Russian/(post)Soviet Constructions of the ”Orient” MADINA TLOSTANOVA In April 2006 at the international conference on the dialogue of Islam and Latinity in Baku (Azerbaijan) Alain Touraine told me that in his opinion this was not a real Islamic country. When I asked why, it turned out that the first and obvious indicator for him were the Azeri women who walked around unveiled, fashionably dressed in Western manner and obviously wanting to look sexually attractive. I commented as a way of explanation that in the Soviet colonies modernization was highly circular and Touraine’s reaction was quick and sincere when he said: “Good !” But later I realized that there was a mixed sentiment behind — on the one hand, it was good for the French intellectual that the country was not openly Islamic in its presentation, on the other hand, there was an element of disappointment, because this Orient somehow did not come to Touraine’s (exoticist) expectations. While the Azeri women still could not escape being interpreted through the Orientalist lens… long time has passed since E. Said wrote his famous book on orientalism (Said 1978), there A emerged many adherents and opponents of Said’s position. It would be ridiculous to deny its importance but at the same time it is crucial to realize its contextuality and avoid imposing Said’s orientalist conception on all other cultural and epistemic locales of modernity Thus, it refers to Russia and its many former and present colonies where instead of the western forms of orientalism we find secondary orientalism which is the direct result of the secondary eurocentrism — and old and incurable Russian disease. Both of then reflect and distort the western originals in the Russian cultural and mental space. Orientalist constructs in this case turn out not only more complex but also built on the principle of double mirror reflections, on the copying of western orientalism with a slight deviation and necessarily, with a carefully hidden, often unconscious feeling that Russia itself is a form of a mystic and mythic Orient for the West. As a result, both mirrors – the one turned in the direction of the colonies and the one tuned by Europe in the direction of Russia itself — appear to be distorting mirrors that create a specific unstable sensibility of Russian intellectuals, writers, artists. It can be defined as balancing between the role of object and that of the subject in the epistemic and existential sense. This complication of orientalist discourses in Russia and its colonies is connected with its complicated imperial-colonial configuration in modernity. For the quasi-Western subaltern Russian and Soviet empire the secondary eurocentrism and the imperial (and not just colonial) difference with the more successful capitalist empires of modernity (the British empire, France, Germany) steps forward in the shaping of subjectivity of both the colonizer and the colonized. On the global scale this imperial difference mutates into the colonial one as Russia becomes an example of the external imperial difference. The Russian imperial discourses demonstrate the double-faced nature of this empire which feel itself a colony in the presence of the West, at the same time acting as a half-hearted and caricature “civilizer” in its own non-European colonies (Tlostanova 2003). Taking into account the specific conditions of Russia as an intellectually colonized subaltern empire with the stressed imperial difference, let us see how the Western Orientalist discourses have been reshaped and transmuted in the second modernity as specific ways of representation and interpretation of the non-European Russian colonies of Caucasus and Central Asia that have played and continue to play today the part of the mysterious, repulsive? Scary and seductive Orient. The very encoding of Caucasus as part of the prototypal Orient — biologically 2 | Worlds & Knowledges Otherwise | Spring 2008 inferior, culturally backwards and forever fixed and fallen out of history, which we can clearly see in the art, memoirs, and particularly in Russian 19th century fiction, signalizes the deep interiorization in the Russian imperial consciousness of the borrowed European discourses, including the Orientalist clichés. The latter were often overtly libidinous, but if in the Western mind it has been often depicted in terms of submissive feminine Orient being dominated and inseminated by the European colonizer, in the Russian version of early romantic Orientalism this model would be impossible, because of the inferiority complex vis-à-vis Europe, which was partially compensated by the caricature secondary Orientalism in Russia’s colonies. Above all, it was connected with the general orientalizing of the Russians themselves on the global scale1. The Orientalist discourses in Russia itself could not possibly be simple or straightforward, being based on the interplay of colonial and imperial differences. The Western image of Russia as a double-faced combination of Asian and Germanic characteristics, where the aggressive and despotic demonized elements of Orient prevailed over the exotic and eroticized ones, was internalized and reinterpreted within the Russian intellectual tradition, which is particularly obvious in the so called Russian religious philosophy of the late 19th century, that used Western Orientalism unconsciously, as one of its frames. But re-interpreting the Orientalist clichés positively, with the good intention of redeeming Russia, these philosophers still based their arguments on the Western categories, notions and assumptions and in fact contributed a lot to the continuing orientalizing of their own country. These philosophers attempting to protest against the barbarian and exoticist image of Russia in the European mind, in fact were looking for nothing but recognition of their country by the West and the Western acceptance of the Russian leading role in the future progress of humanity, that was justified by presumable exceptional spirituality, linked with the Orthodox Christianity (Berdyaev 2002). It is symptomatic for the subaltern empire, which even claiming the global spiritual and transcendental superiority, is still looking for the approval and love of the West. -II- If in Europe Orientalism was a tool for the positive self-semiotization as opposed to the fallen out of time, irrational, devious Orient, in Russia the configuration was a bit different. On the one hand, a representative of the Russian elite clearly coded himself or herself as a European, albeit a second-rate one. On the other hand, it looked as if the Orient that the Russian empire got through its colonizing efforts, was also somehow second-rate, not like the one of Europe. The same way as the officers of the Russian army complained that the war in Caucasus was not interesting or educational enough as a war in Europe could be, when it referred to the Orient they constructed out of Caucasus and later — Central Asia, it also turned out to be inferior and the gap between the Orientalist European fantasy and the reality of Caucasus or Central Asian conquest was only too obvious for the colonizers. The women were not beautiful, submissive and exotic enough, the luxury was lacking or not sufficient, the entertainments and pleasures were not cultivated and refined as the ones in the European Orient, the local men did not correspond to the Orientalist stereotype of colonial male weakness and femininity. In short, Caucasus as an uncomfortable, relatively small space covered with steep and high mountains and populated with proud and skillful warriors was far from the Orientalist tale drawn in Europe and imported into Russia2. Hence it had to be edited on the way and made fit the stereotype. Thus, the Orient in the eyes of Russian elites of the second half of the 19th – early 20th century, was doubling and consequently, there were two possible ways of its interpretation. The first consisted in forgetting about the second-rate Russian Asia and turning to the real and alien (for Russians) “Orient” as it happened with the famous Russian Orientalist painter V. Vereschagin who after Central Asia went to India and the Middle East. The enchantment with the Orient, the primitivist and exoticist tendencies in the early 20th century Russian literature and art were also expressed not just in looking for their own “Asiatic” roots (often imagined and stylized), but also in the interest in real (first-rate, European) orient – India, China, Egypt, Muslim Africa. TLOSTA NOV A | The Janus-faced Empire Distorting Orientalist Discourses| 3 Often the negative characteristics associated with Orientalism were projected by the Russians onto the interpretation of other empires deeds while the native material was not coded in the Orientalist terms. Vereschagin “defended” Samarkand from the revolting local people but turned overnight into the defender of Indian peasants against the British colonialists. Here we find the familiar logic of the black legend – justifying one empire at the expense of the other. The Russian poets of the so called Silver Age were also fascinated with the mysteries of Egyptian culture, the eroticism of a giraffe by the lake Chad, the Zanzibar maidens and other such “masquerade junk” to use Anna Akhmatova’s words. And yet it was a different and more complex interpretation of the Orient in comparison with the 19th century. The second possible way for interpreting the Orient was editing Russia’s own East making it fit the generally accepted orientalist stereotype. The only way to do it for the Russians was to cling themselves even more to the false European identity which was precisely what the Russian elites did throughout almost the whole 19th century, compensating their inferiority, both with respect to Europe and the newly acquired colonies with the exaggerated assertion of Europeism, Whiteness and civilizing discourses. In this case racism acted not as an conscious accompanying factor for economy and ideology, but rather as an unavoidable element of the whole package of modernity that Russia attempted to borrow but failed to properly conceptualize.
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